


The Only Thing

by so_freaking_tired



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Cute, F/M, Fluff, Making Out, Modern AU, proposal, suuuuper fluffy, yeah that's all i got
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-11
Updated: 2019-06-11
Packaged: 2020-04-24 11:10:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19172068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/so_freaking_tired/pseuds/so_freaking_tired
Summary: Arya takes Gendry on a romantic vacation to Italy. Gendry has big plans for the trip - turns out, so does Arya.





	The Only Thing

**Author's Note:**

> hi!  
> this is my first time writing any kind of fanfiction, so be nice please :) i hope you guys enjoy, let me know in the comments if you do / if you want me to write more, any kind of validation means a lot haha!  
> enjoy!  
> ~ laura   
> p.s. this is also posted on my Tumblr, @so_freaking_tired

On the train ride to Venice, the gentle rumble of the car had lulled Arya to sleep against Gendry’s sturdy shoulder. Her mouth hung open against his shirt and his arm was wrapped around her waist to protect her from slipping.   
Gendry smiled at her quiet slumber, the only time during their trip that she’d really been quiet. They both had been perpetually wine-tipsy, being in Italy and all, but he also attributed her talkativeness with her pure excitement about their glamorous European vacation.  
In truth, it was his vacation – though she paid for most of it, being the breadwinner (and coming from old money) she’d taken him to fulfill his lifelong dream of visiting the city of Venice.   
“It’s romantic,” he’d said, “Paris is overrated. Who wouldn’t want to eat spaghetti Lady and the Tramp style on a balcony overlooking those little rowboats?”  
Arya had laughed. “Gondola,” she said and kissed his lips gently. “It’s called a gondola. And are you saying that we don’t dedicate ourselves to romance as a couple?”   
Gendry glanced around their living room. Maybe it was romantic that their meet-cute had been at kickboxing, and he’d asked for her number right after she (literally) kicked his ass sparring, and perhaps their whirlwind upper-class-lady-meets-lower-class-bastard relationship had been something for the books, but nothing about their daily lives screamed romance. Half-empty Chinese food boxes and fortune cookie wrappers covered the coffee table, and their conversation was taking place as she straddled him on the couch. Chinese food dinner followed by making out (among other things) was Arya’s favorite date night.   
Nevertheless, Arya had noted his interest in Italy, and their summer vacation ended up being a surprise trip to Europe. He’d been ecstatic – she’d smirked humbly and pretended like she wasn’t the perfect girlfriend. She insisted that it wasn’t hard to remember someone telling you about their dream vacation, but Gendry knew that Arya made an effort to ignore most of Sansa’s rantings and ravings or her mother’s complaints and commands, so he couldn’t help but feel special whenever she listened to him.   
Arya came to as the train slowed bumpily, and her eyes fluttered open against his white button-down.   
“Are we here?”   
He stared out at the station. It was all white tile and soft pink rock – not ugly like the stations in King’s Landing, filled with rats and discarded newspapers.   
He helped her off the train and they collected their things quickly, desperate to get out of the stuffiness of a public place and into the sun. She pressed a sunhat onto her head and decided upon the additional protection of sunglasses, making her look Vogue ready, and Gendry received a punch to the arm when he told her so.   
They took a taxi to their hotel. Gaping at the sights, Gendry couldn’t understand that Venice was real – it was out of a book. It was all cobblestone streets and brightly colored buildings, tile rooves, the little rowboats (“gondolas,” Arya reminded him again) along the canals. Pigeons confidently waddled straight up to tourists. Classy-looking ladies and gentlemen sat in cafés and restaurants.  
“That’s going to be us tonight,” Gendry grinned and pointed at two of them sitting on a table outside and sipping on coffees. “Except with wine.” Arya groaned and leaned her head against the headrest.   
“I don’t think I can stand another sip of wine,” she complained, “I’m constantly drunk. I think this is the first moment I’ve been sober since our first night in Rome.”  
“You chose to come to Italy,” he retorted, “wine was inevitable.”   
She pinched his cheek. “I chose it for you, stupid.”   
He smiled at her fondly. She stuck her tongue out back. 

 

“Which would you like me to read next?” she held up two books. He looked back and forth between the two.   
“You choose. You know I don’t know anything about books.” He responded. She chuckled and tossed one down into her suitcase. Holding the other one under her arm, she crawled up to him on the white sheets. It had become habit, not just during their glorious European travels, for her to read each night before they slept. Gendry wasn’t a reader; he refused to do anything more than skim his books in high school and his dyslexia prevented him from comprehending the words on the page. But he found it easy to understand Arya, and he loved listening to her speak, so after they moved in together and she’d sit at night with her book mouthing the words, he couldn’t resist asking her to read aloud. Often he fell asleep or she read ahead, but the story didn’t matter so much as the act itself.   
She flipped onto her back and opened to the first page with a satisfied breath, her eyes kissing the first words as she opened her mouth to speak.  
When Arya’s lips moved, the sound was lost. Her grey eyes flitted left and right with each descending line. With new paragraphs, she licked her lips. Her index finger flipped the top corner of the right page up a few lines before the end of the page, waiting, yearning to move on in the story. Arya’s dedication to her stories much complimented her personality – always searching, longing for adventure. Grimacing at the thought of standing still. He’d never dare tell her that the dreaminess in her eyes as she read matched Sansa’s when she watched a romance film.   
Her eyes flickered to him out of habit, to check if he was listening or asleep. She stopped for a moment.   
“Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked him.   
Who wouldn’t? He thought. How had he become so lucky to come from the deepest pit of nothing and find her? Her eyes were a storm, her touch was heaven, her wrath was hell. He’d given her his heart, to do with it what she would, it was hers to hold and break. But she kept it safe for him, right next to hers. And later, she gave him the same gift.   
“You’re just…” he couldn’t find the words. She searched his eyes and seemed to find it within him, as her lips melted into a smile. “the only thing.” He finished. That matters. That I love. He thought.   
She kissed him. He knew she couldn’t respond with the same thing – she loved her family – but he didn’t have one. He hadn’t even expected himself to have a future. But here she was.   
Her hands cupped his cheeks and his held her elbows. Their kiss wasn’t desperate or messy like it sometimes was, but slow and full of meaning. Sometimes a kiss was just a kiss; sometimes it held the weight of the world. Today, her lips against his shouted the same thing over and over and over again as they moved together in harmony: I love you. I love you. I love you.   
They’d finally taken a ride in one of those rowboats – gondolas – and nearly tipped it over in the process. They ate breakfast on their balcony, overlooking the warm glow of morning peeking over the colored buildings and shimmering against the canal. She even dragged him to St. Mark’s Basilica, and they fed pigeons, and Gendry wondered what kind of demon spawn those creatures were to fly so aggressively for their crumbs. Arya was knelt over laughing watching the birds swarm him.   
“Little devils,” he said, collapsing on their bed back at the hotel later that day. He expected Arya to respond with her signature snark, or tease him again, but when he looked up she was texting someone viciously, a smile on her face. “Who are you texting?” he asked curiously. Usually she liked to talk on the phone rather than text, which, come to think of it, she’d been doing a lot of the past few nights, out in the hallway and out of his earshot.   
“Sansa,” she responded after a moment. “I’m just a bit homesick is all.”   
This struck Gendry as odd – she didn’t get homesick. If she got homesick she wouldn’t have applied for so many summer programs in high school (the “best times of her life” as she’d told him) or taken so many trips with him out-of-the-blue, or studied abroad, or deliberately chosen a college across the country from her family. Nevertheless, her business was hers, so he brushed off her behavior and nodded understandingly. 

On their second-to-last night, Arya slipped on a short black dress and red, thick-heeled pumps with lipstick to match and told him to put something nice on.   
His heart raced.   
His insistence that Italy was romantic had perhaps been a factor in Arya’s choice to book a trip there. But his dream of traveling someplace full of love with her had grounds – he expected that if they went someplace like Italy, he’d have to finally be brave enough to ask.   
So, when he locked the door to the bathroom saying he had to pee before they left, he pulled a navy-blue velvet box out of his toiletries bag and put it in the pocket of his suit.   
He’d planned to do it on the balcony, because he thought that would be romantic, but dinner would be nice too. If they didn’t have an outdoor table away from prying eyes, he’d do it on the walk home – she wouldn’t want it to happen so publicly. He knew her well enough to know that she didn’t like attention drawn to herself.   
Their dinner was delicious, but Gendry felt a pit of nervousness in his stomach that no amount of pasta could fill. They were seated at a private table away from other diners, overlooking the grand canal. The moon was high in the sky and by the time after-supper coffee was served, the stars were burning brightly in the sky and in Arya’s eyes.   
“I’m happy I chose Venice. That you chose Venice.” She told him gently.   
“I’m happy that you chose me,” he replied softly, and she reached out to hold his hand.   
“Me too.”   
“I love you.”  
“Me too. I mean, I love you too.” She specified.   
This is the time, he thought.   
“I love you, a lot.” He said, and she opened her mouth as if to tease him for having already said that. “More than I can say in twenty lifetimes. But, I at least want to be there to remind you in this lifetime how much you mean to me. God, I love you so much. It hurts being away from you and it heals me to be close to you. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me Arya, and… I just want to be with you. I want to be your family.”   
He was quite sure this was the part where he was supposed to get down on one knee, so he did, pushing his chair back and looking up at her from the ground as he fumbled to pull the box out of his jacket. She was grinning widely, her chest expanded like she was holding her breath. Her eyes glimmered – maybe it was tears, maybe it was the stars.   
“I want to be with you forever. I want you to be there when I open my eyes and when I close them. I want to see you have our children and I want us to grow old together. Arya, will you-”   
Suddenly she was bursting with laughter.   
“-marry me? What’s so funny?” he asked dully. Perhaps the ring was too small? No, Arya wouldn’t care about that. So why was she laughing?  
She pushed her chair back and got down on her knees. She twisted around and reached into the pocket of her coat, which rested on the back of her chair, and pulled out an identical velvet box. She opened it and a silver band sat inside, not too much thicker than the one he got for her (though his was attributed with a diamond).   
“I’m… confused.” He stated. She was crying, and laughing, and he didn’t even know why.   
“I was going to ask you the same thing, stupid,” she told him. “I was going to ask you to marry me. Tonight.”   
Gendry’s face flushed and his eyes watered. He couldn’t contain himself, even though they both kneeled on the stone patio of a fancy restaurant, and pulled her to him, kissing her fiercely.   
“So, is that a yes?” he asked hopefully. He wiped a tear from her eye.  
“Yes, of course. What about you?”  
“Yes, a million times.”   
Their walk back to the hotel was giddy, full of hand holding and soft smiles and admiration of their new accessories, which matched perfectly. As soon as they got to the hotel room, Gendry pulled Arya close to him and kissed her again, and again, and again, until she pulled away, leaving him feeling parched for more.   
“Wait,” she said, “I have to take a picture.”   
“For who?” He asked.   
“My family. Why do you think I’ve been texting and calling so much? I was telling them what I was planning to do,” she explained, “I have to tell them that you said yes.”  
He smiled at her and let her pull his hand into the frame, their fingers interlocked and showing off their engagement rings. She sent the picture and threw her phone onto a nearby chair, wrapping her arms around his neck once more.   
“You’re my ex-boyfriend now,” she smirked at him, “and I’m only going to introduce you as so at family events and my dad’s work parties,” she teased.   
“What? You don’t like the sound of fiancé?” he teased right back. She pursed her lips.   
“Mmm… ex-boyfriend is just funnier,” she said, and closed the distance between them. He strained his neck leaning down to kiss her small frame, so she let herself be picked up in his strong arms and carried back towards the bed, where he lay her down as she pried off her shoes with her toes. He took off his jacket and shoes, leaning down to melt into another kiss. As she unbuttoned his shirt and his hands slid up her thighs and towards her panties, Arya’s phone rang.   
She sat up. “Who the hell is that?” she asked loudly. Gendry groaned and moved off of her, his fiancé, and checked the caller ID.   
“It’s Sansa,” he grinned and turned back to her. Arya’s eyes flashed and she gave him a playful grin. He moved back to her and kissed her again, his hips moving against hers just enough that she let out a soft moan.   
“Let’s ignore it,” she decided, “I’ll just tell her we were busy.”   
And the two of them joined once more.


End file.
